Just back from Insomnia. I got tired unexpectedly quickly, and so this is oddly early for me to be back. Maybe it's because I left for there around 10PM. Hmm.

Was thinking about a book I've been reading -- The Crooked Timber of Humanity. It's a very good book, reading like a heavily annotated history of philosophical trends. It makes me worry a bit about a particular effect of the way the political landscape is laid out now -- it's anything but flat. Am I wasting time trying to enlighten the religious at all? Am I wasting time that could be spent on people who have already disposed of religion and are waiting for a good philosophy? How do I budget my philosophical time?

Secondly, I suppose I've come to appreciate something I saw some time back on the wall of the AI lab I worked for as a student -- argument maps. It ties together summarized arguments on a topic, pairing responses after responses. I might produce the same thing sometime, and perhaps use that format exclusively for non ground-breaking philosophy, e.g. debunking christianity or religion in general. Argument maps look like a pretty cool way to explore an issue rationally, disallowing ad hominem and other bad tactics.

I suppose finally, I've been mulling over ideas for a in-person semiformal debate format. I'm interested in mainly high-level (read: not talking about time limits and similar) rules.

Anyhow, probably will take a hot bath, and maybe order some food -- my fridge, ever since I cleaned it recently, has been on the empty side (before I cleaned it, it was more full, but most of the food was rotten). Currently, I have absolutely zero food (except the collards and similar devoted to my iggies). I hate situations like that -- if I get really hungry, the only thing that I could eat right now would be rice. I like rice, but it's generally not that good as a sole component of a meal/snack.